Colossians 3:12-17: As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. 13 Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lordf has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christg dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.h 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
How Jesus Escaped
The Sunday after Christmas, the Sunday School teacher told her
students about an angel appearing to Joseph in a dream, warning
him about danger to the baby Jesus and telling him how to escape
from it.
After the story time, the students were given an opportunity to
draw a picture about the story.
Most of the pictures were predictable, but Larry’s had an odd
element in it. "Larry, I see Joseph and Mary with the baby Jesus
on a donkey, but what is that following the donkey?
"It’s the flea, teacher."
"Flea...? Ah...what flea?" asked the teacher.
To which the boy faithfully repeated the Bible verse, "Take Mary
and Jesus and flea to Egypt." he said. "There’s Mary, there’s
Jesus, and there’s the flea."
Don’t you think it is very unfortunate that a child has to run away at such a young age? I reminds me of my escape from China when I was three. During the Cultural Revolution thousands and thousands of Chinese escaped to Burma. Burma never welcomed immigrants, so most Chinese had to sneak into Burma by crossing a river, call Ruili River. If the Burmese guards saw any Chinese crossing the river, they would shoot them with their rifles. They are not as kind as our American border policy.
The first thing you do when you arrived in Burma is to put on Burmese dress because the two cultures are very different. They dress very differently, especially the women. But both Burmese men and women wear long skirts that they call long-chi. Unless you change your dress, you will be identified right away as someone from the other side of the river.
In the scripture today, we were reminded to put on Christian clothes because you have crossed the river from the dark to the light. How are Christians supposed to dress? The first century Christians cares more about the internal dress, internal character, then external ones because they were sick and tired of hypocrisy of the religious people of their days. Jesus spoke strongly against them. After crossing the river, God doesn’t want you to be still identified as someone from the other side of the river and send back by the authority.
This morning’s scripture lesson is from what I call the passage of Christian clothing. The passage is packed with instructions and if we can take this passage as our New Year resolution and be able to live with it, we will have a very fruitful year of 2007.
Before we look at these Christian clothing, the Bible reminds us of our status, or our identity. The passage began with, "As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved." First, you are chosen ones. This is one of the Presbyterian distinctives. If you are a Baptist, you choose a church that you want to go and you choose to be baptized when you are mature enough to make the choice. But the Presbyterians believe that we don’t choose to come to this church, but God chose us and brought us together. So the difference is that if you are a Baptist, you look for a church with a type of people you can get along. But if you a Presbyterian you try to get along with the people God put you with.
So in a Baptist church you often see the same type of people together, but in a Presbyterian church you would see a ragtag bunch of people, where you really have to stretch your patience to get along. This is not always true but that’s at least how these two denominations distinct from one another.
So remember, you are chosen by God. Not because you are good, or better than anybody else. You are chosen by God’s grace. It is not because of who you are it is because of who God is.
Secondly, you are holy. The word holy means being set apart. You are set apart by God as God’s own. It is like a marriage ceremony when a man and a woman is set apart for each other to be life time partners, for good, for bad and for a life time. Would it be awkward after the wedding ceremony, the bride went home with the best man? We need to know our status as holy people, set apart for God and God alone, for good for bad, and forever.
Thirdly, you are God’s beloved. No matter what the world says about you, they might say you are stupid, or you are a failure, or you will never amount to anything, but you are God’s beloved. You matter so much to God that he die for you on the cross saying that I love you this much (stretch out the arms like on the cross and like preparing for a big embrace).
You are God’s chosen, holy, and beloved. Every discontent, anger, worry and dispute starts from when we forget our identity. You will not be able to put on the clothes the rest of the passage is talking about unless you keep living in this identity. Every morning, the first thing you need to remind you is that I am a chosen one, I am holy, and I am a beloved. Let us remind one another this morning. Let’s turn to someone sitting next to you and say, "You are God’s chosen one, holy, and beloved." And turn to another side and that that person "I am God’s chosen one, holy, and beloved."
Now we are ready for the rest of the passage. From verse 12 to 14, there is a description of what I call an eight-piece suit for Christians. It says, "... clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony."
Compassion: Let’s assume that the compassion is something you wear inside around your waste. The Greek word here means "the bowel of mercy." Today we often point to our heart for compassion, but for the first century culture, compassion is part of the deeper emotion that comes out of the intestinal area. It should be a constant attitude from the bottom of our heart.
Kindness: Kindness is love in action. The Bible says, "God is love." We know that He is love because of His kind action. He chose us out of kindness, not because we deserve it. So we should show kindness to one another not because they deserve it, but because God has been kind to us, later Paul mention that our kindness should come out of our thanksgiving heart to what Christ has done for us..
Humility: The pagan world of Paul’s day did not admire humility. Instead, they admired pride and domination. Humility is not thinking poorly of oneself. Rather, it is having the proper estimate of oneself in the will of God. Romans 12:3 says, "For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned." So in breaf humanity is being able to make sober judgment of yourself rather than living in a imaginative self.
Meekness: Meekness is not weakness; it is power under control. This word was used to describe a soothing wind, a healing medicine, and a colt that had been broken. In each instance, there is power: a wind can become a storm; too much medicine can kill; a horse can break loose. But this power is under control. The meek person does not have to fly off the handle because he has everything under control.
Patience: This word is literally “long-temper.” The short-tempered person speaks and acts impulsively and lacks self-control. When a person is long-suffering, he can put up with provoking people or circumstances without retaliating. It is good to be able to get angry, for this is a sign of holy character. But it is wrong to get angry quickly at the wrong things and for the wrong reasons.
Bear with one another: This word literally means “to hold up” or “to hold back.” God bear with the sinners in that He holds back His judgment (Rom. 2:4; 3:25).
Forgiveness: This is the logical result of all that Paul has written so far in this section. It is not enough that the Christian must endure grief and provocation, and refuse to retaliate; he must also forgive the troublemaker. If he does not, then feelings of malice will develop in the heart; and these can lead to greater sins. It is Christlike to forgive (Eph. 4:32), and forgiveness opens the heart to the fullness of the love of God.
Love: This is the most important of the Christian virtues, and it acts like a “girdle” that ties all the other virtues together. All of the spiritual qualities Paul has named are aspects of true Christian love, as a reading of 1 Corinthians 13 will reveal. Love is the first of the fruit of the Spirit and the other virtues follow—joy (Col. 3:16), peace (Col. 3:15), long-suffering, gentleness, kindness, and meekness (Col. 3:12).
Paul summarized this eight-piece suit in Galatians 3:27 "clothe your self with Jesus Christ," because these are the character of Jesus Christ. In the first century, the word Christian was actually a slur, a contemptuous term, to ridicule the followers of Christ. It means little Christ. The Christians became proud of that name because that’s exactly what they tried to be, to be like Christ. So, each of you are a little Christ when you put on Christ and clothe yourselves with the characters of Jesus Christ.
Then Paul turned from character to conduct. He says, "And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts." What’s interesting about this verse is the use of rule, which is a Greek word often used in the sports. It represents a function of an umpire. So Paul is saying, "Let the peace of Christ be your umpire in your heart." If you are aware of the fact that you don’t have the peace of Christ in your heart, it means you might be disobeying the will of God. If you do, you are on the right tract. This peace is not only shown internally, but also externally. Your ability to be at peace with people can be the umpire for your conduct.
The next verse says, " Let the word of Christg dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom" According to the background of this letter, there were false teachers that came to Colossae and preach false doctrines. We also face false teachings everyday, through some media, politicians, and false teachers. Having the word of Christ dwell in you richly, allows you to prevent yourselves from being taken in by the false teachings, but also give you the ability to teach and admonish one anther using the word of Christ.
Paul then closed with a summery, "And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Two things: we do it in the name of the Lord Jesus, because we bear his name; we are little Christ. Second: we do everything with thanksgiving. This is what makes Christians different form the rest of all religions. All religions tells you to do things to earn eternal salvation, but Christians do things to give thanks because salvation is already given to us for free through the love and grace of God.
For those who don’t have a New Year resolution, I recommend that you use the passage as your New Year resolution and live a fruitful life. God bless you all! Amen.
